by Ben Brooks
We’re at the front of the queue. A tall man in a bomber jacket looks at the face on my pretend driving licence. His lip twitches. I look like a gerbil in the picture. Macy doesn’t get asked for ID. She reaches for her pocket but stops midway, examines her knuckles and looks directly up. I put my debit card into a reader and someone stamps black balloons onto our wrists and we go inside.
‘This is going to be fun,’ Macy says.
‘What?’
‘This is going to be fun.’
‘Oh.’
People aren’t fun.
There are a thousand bears wrestling under revolving lights and lasers. Several men are topless. Layers of sweat cover their chests like cellophane. My body accumulates weight. I am as heavy as one hundred hotel rooms. I try to dig through the floors of my pockets. Maybe I can escape. I will make tiny tunnels and disappear down them. No. Breathe. Stay here with Macy. Then sex her. That’s why you’re here. Look:
Her hips are scales and her fingers are against the back of my neck. I should try to dance. I should try to make my body move in an appealing way. I should seduce her with my body-popping prowess. Macy is Shakira. I will be Ricky Martin.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Jesus.
I look severely retarded. If I keep doing this someone is going to make me sit in a wheelchair. Someone is going to call an ambulance. Are people looking? It’s hard to see anything. The lights are blue now. We’re in a loud underwater cave. Macy’s grinning. Her eyes are closed. I don’t understand. We have been inside for one minute. I want to be not inside for all of the minutes left between now and for ever.
‘I’ll get drinks,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘Drinks.’
‘What?’
I panic and walk away towards the bar. I tuck in my elbows. There are bears either side of me. They are holding notes in their fists and leaning forward at uncomfortable angles. Macy’s arm curls around my back. Her mouth comes to my ear.
‘Are you okay?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t look okay, hon.’
I don’t want to be here but Macy does. I should be able to stand in a building with people and not collapse. I’ll drink. I’ll drink and learn dancing with my eyes. I’ve seen Step Up. I can try. ‘I’m okay.’ I’m Channing Tatum.
Macy orders our drinks. She gets two half-orange, half-red cocktails that come in glasses shaped like fruit bowls.
‘Relax,’ she shouts.
‘I am relaxed,’ I shout.
‘Good.’
‘Yeah.’
I hold the fruit bowl in both hands and tip whatever the liquid is back into my mouth. Trickles of orange escape my cheeks and drip off my chin. Macy laughs. She passes me hers and I drink that too. My stomach mumbles. Warmth spreads through my canals.
‘Come on,’ Macy says. I follow her through the tight spaces between bodies. Gaps open and close like lift doors. I think, this doesn’t make sense. My legs keep moving. I am relying on my legs to not get too upset and lie down. I ricochet off wet shoulders. Macy stops in a small clearing, raises her hands over her head and begins to rotate her hips. I want to run forward and hug her. I want to bury my head between her breasts and disappear. I can’t. I have to try.
*
I’m trying to make my body bend while Rihanna sings about love and how it goes away. There are more people now. My phone starts to ring. It’s Hattie. I want to answer it. I try to push out a path to somewhere quieter.
‘CAN YOU HEAR ME?’ she says.
‘YES.’
‘ETGAR?’
‘YES.’ I find a corner to press myself into, next to the women’s toilet.
‘I THOUGHT I LOVED YOU BUT IT WAS JUST BECAUSE JAMES WAS SO FAMILIAR AND YOU AREN’T AND I DON’T KNOW BUT I DEFINITELY DON’T AND WE SHOULD STOP DOING THE HUMPING BECAUSE I’M GOING TO BE SERIOUS WITH JAMES FROM NOW.’
I didn’t expect her to call and say that. I didn’t expect her to call. I’m happy she did.
‘Okay.’
‘OKAY?’
‘OKAY.’
‘OKAY.’
‘I’M SORRY FOR BEING A DICK I WASN’T GOOD AT THINKING ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE THIS WEEK.’
‘I’M SORRY TOO HAVE FUN WHEREVER YOU ARE SEE YOU ON TUESDAY.’
I feel a little lighter. I’m going to go and pick Macy up. I’m going to ask her to teach me dancing. I’m going to be fine.
*
She’s gone. She disappeared. I don’t know when. I don’t know what’s happening. A woman came wearing holsters filled with Jägermeister and sold me three shots. Then I danced more. Then a song came on and all the arms went up and I was looking through the arms for Macy’s and they weren’t there.
I’m standing at the bar. I’m holding a bottle of lime-flavour Mexican beer, trying to make my breathing get slow. I imagine my lungs as an accordion playing the funeral march. I close my eyes and see Alice behind them. She’s sitting at the opposite end of the bath, with panda eyes, shaking her head. I think, fuck you. You had fun being fingered by Aaron Mathews. I’m going to have fun in a gay nightclub in London. I’m going to finger the fuck out of everyone. I’m going to forget that you exist. I’m going to drown you.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ a man next to me says. He’s around Macy’s age, and wearing a denim jacket above loose blue chinos. His hair is parted in the middle, each side tucked behind an ear. I want to run away but I’m going to have fun. I’m going to have so much fun.
‘Yes,’ I say, pointing out a random yellow bottle on the glass shelf over the barman’s head. The man next to me does a come here, now it’s your job gesture with his hand. He orders the drinks, drops a forearm onto the bar and leans to one side. I pinch at thigh-skin through my pocket. ‘Alan,’ the man says, picking my hand up from my side and shaking it.
‘Wicked,’ I say. ‘Super doop.’
‘Now you tell me yours.’
‘Oscar.’ Alan lets go of my hand. He’s been holding it for an unusually long amount of time. I think, does Alan fancy me? I think, probably not. He just wants someone to stand with. That’s all anyone wants. We’ll both stand here. Macy will come back. It’s okay. Breathe.
Have fun.
Alan downs his drink and tells me to do the same. I do the same. He leads me away from the bar and starts to dance gently against my side. I close my eyes. I make my arms take it in turns to go up and down. I picture a team of narwhals congregated in a morning sea, trying to get close and not being able to. Alan grunts. His head’s moving like a cartoon Egyptian. I don’t want him to be upset but also I don’t want him to grind me. He puts a hand against my back. The muscles in my legs involuntarily tense so hard it hurts.
Have fun.
Katy Perry’s playing. Alan mouths the words at me. He’s grinning and his eyebrows are almost lost in his hair. I try to make my eyes go blank and bright.
‘Baby, you’re a firework.’
What does that even mean? There are better metaphors to flatter people with, I feel. Alice and I played metaphors in the mornings sometimes. You are an infinite Jacuzzi. You are a vat of Nesquik tea. You are afternoon naps.
She’s back.
She won’t leave.
Go away. You don’t live here any more. I’ll call the police.
Have fun.
Alan has a boner now. He isn’t trying to conceal it. It’s nudging my leg like Amundsen when he wants to be stroked. I don’t want to stroke you, Alan. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. There was nothing in the book for this. I only know what to do if he tries to attack me. I know about gouging eyes and headbutting noses and kneeing balls. I don’t know about how to stop a smiling man from grinding me. He looks happy. He looks content.
Have fun.
Alan spins me.
I think, what is fun and how do you tell when you are having it? This doesn’t feel like fun. Maybe I don’t understand fun. Maybe this is exactly what fun is and I d
on’t like fun but that’s okay because I do like some things:
– Morning breakfast on the patio with Alice when it’s hot and we’re trying to remember what bad things we saw or did or were victims of the night before.
– Sharing vodka and coke with Alice in Geography.
– When Alice
– Masturbating as soon as you wake up. Sometimes over things from your dreams or vintage porns or Rashida Jones.
– Whistling to the theme tune for CSI: New York in bed when it’s late.
– Yogurt.
– Rum.
– Macy.
– I don’t know.
but not this. Definitely not this.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I need to go.’
‘Wait,’ Alan says.
‘Bye.’
‘I bought you a drink.’
‘Sorry.’ He seizes me by the arms. I see a bear the size of an apartment block, with fat yellow teeth connected by webs of saliva, and eyes like glasses of red wine. He is going to swallow me. I’m going to starve to death inside the cathedral of his stomach. My tiny people will marry his tiny people. We will all melt into the ground. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Please.’
I feel stubble against my cheek. I shout. Alan’s lips are in my philtrum. He is kissing me. I should hit him. I should stop hitting people. Hitting people is a counter-productive hobby, I feel. I don’t know what to do. Sleeping man should appear and be my captain. We had a deal. Come on. Appear.
Alan flies away from me. His parted hair sinks until it’s planted on the floor. Two men are standing over him. One of the men takes hold of his collar and whispers into his ear and pushes him towards the exit. I feel heavy. He disappears. I know he won’t appear again and it’s okay.
Have fun.
I’m sitting on the floor. I didn’t realise. Hands grip my armpits. I think about Alice. She’s here. She’s not. It’s the men. They carry me. They carry me through the shoulder gaps and the air is cool and my back’s against a cold brick wall. A cigarette is nudged into my mouth.
‘Thanks,’ I say. I blink and look up. One of the anti- Alan men is holding a lighter. His eyes are soft. He brushes his hair backwards. The sky behind his head has gone the colour of undiluted Ribena. We are in the smoking pen.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’ I scratch my head. ‘I feel drunk.’
They laugh. ‘You’re not gay, are you?’ the other man asks. He’s wearing small, circular glasses and a teal Ralph Lauren shirt.
‘I don’t think so.’
They laugh again and sit down on the asphalt in front of me. We are a triangle. Their names are Alex and Pablo. They ask who I’m here with and I say Macy and they want to know about her. I tell them about the Internet. I talk about Alice. I don’t know why. They laugh when I say I called her a walrus. They tell me to be nicer to Amundsen because it’s unlikely that he’ll ever be fingered by Aaron Mathews.
Alex and Pablo have been together for three years. They met because Alex saw Pablo’s picture in a fashion magazine and emailed him. Pablo is a model and Alex writes newspaper headlines. Sometimes they read Twilight to each other and laugh until they fall asleep.
‘You should write a letter,’ Alex says. ‘I did that with my last boyfriend. It forces you to slow down and organise everything in your head.’
‘I’ll try it, thanks.’
‘Don’t send it.’
‘Listen,’ Pablo says, jumping up. I listen. A familiar piano melody is floating out of the open doors. I stand up. It’s Vanessa Carlton. We go back inside. The room is loud with the traffic of voices. People are locked together, singing into each other’s mouths, wetly and inaccurately, and happily, like sea lions.
Alex puts me on his shoulders and I knot my arms around his neck. We sway. I shout the words, sometimes falling behind or ahead. I’m burning bright. I feel tall. I look down into bald islands on people’s heads. Alex is a concrete ballast. He won’t drop me. Maybe I’m gay. No, I already tried that. I’m okay, though. Not everyone is trying to kill me. Maybe I’ll forget tomorrow. Maybe I can move in with Alex and Pablo. When we go into The Outside, they’ll fight bears off with scooters and unempty threats.
The bridge happens.
Piano again.
Making my way downtown,
walking fast,
faces pass,
and I’m homebound.
I sat in a bush opposite Alice’s house and listened to this song twenty-six times once. There were two boys and a moped between me and her front door. They were showing each other pictures of their girlfriends naked. What the fuck is wrong with her nipples, one said. They look like blueberry muffins. Fuck you, the other one said. Kailey’s cunt’s like a BLT. I started laughing. The boys saw me. I threw myself out of the bush and ran until my legs felt like bricks. Alice laughed when I told her. She said they were her brother’s friends and that they were nice, just occasionally disgusting.
Vanessa finishes.
Alex sets me back down on my feet. Macy is a few metres away, watching us with her hands on her hips. She’s smiling. We kiss. I introduce her to Alex and Pablo. I tickle her hand. I go to the bar and order four bottles of champagne. The barman asks me if I’m sure.
‘Sure as I’ll ever be,’ I say. I have no idea why I say that. I’m not sure if it’s even a real saying. It doesn’t matter. I cover the numbers on the card machine while I enter my pin. We cheers with the champagne bottles. We cheers to Vanessa Carlton and we cheers to nothing because what else.
Alice Poem #4
I am going to have sex with someone else
for the first time in a long time and it is going
to be fucking wicked, okay? Underground
travel is the scariest bear when you are gone. How
we visited, threw one hundred pennies into
the Thames, drank rum, rode bronze lions. You
put cream on my hands when they came open and
were red. Maybe
if we crashed somewhere warm
it would be like
we didn’t really crash. Send me an airbag
if you want. You can make it out of your stupid
massive cellulite thighs you fucking gay bitch.
29
In the taxi back, Macy falls asleep on my shoulder. Her hair folds into a cushion for my head. The driver asks if I had a good night and I say yes. He says his football team fucked up today. I try to remember sports news. I don’t say anything.
‘Someone’s a sleepy bunny,’ he says, turning to look at Macy when we get caught behind a coach on its way to Brussels.
I worry that he’s going to rape us both so I nudge her awake and push money into his hand. We link arms and walk ten minutes back to the hotel. The lobby is empty except for its receptionist, reclining with a Private Eye propped in his lap. In the lift Macy keeps her eyes closed and her arms around my middle. In the room, we make coffees to wake up a little. It’s four. We sit crosslegged on the bed, with the television on and showing a long-haired man in a parka walking along the Jurassic coast, talking in hundreds of millions of years.
‘I went there,’ I say. ‘It was a geography trip. Everyone got drunk and sneaked out of the hotel to swim. It was November, I think. I stayed in the room. I kept thinking about how currents would carry them out to sea and they’d all drown.’
Nothing happens.
‘Why are you so scared?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You weren’t scared tonight.’
‘Alex and Pablo were nice.’ ‘Some people are. Not all strangers are scary. If you talk to people, they normally aren’t.’ I think about sitting in the bush with Amundsen while it rained and meeting Mabel. I think about talking about nothing but feeling like I’d been given emotional liposuction. ‘Sometimes people get abducted and murdered.’
‘If you don’t try then you won’t meet the ones that won’t abduct or murder you. Would you have spoken to me if we’d me
t in a bar?’
‘No.’
‘Are you happy we’re here?’
‘Yes.’
She takes my mug and puts it next to hers on the bedside table. Her mouth comes to mine. Our tongues wrestle. Macy’s hands slide into the back of my hair. I fill my fist with her skirt. I feel like a child holding onto his mum in a thunderstorm. I move my hand up. I think, these breasts have been restaurants. I think, stop thinking that. Macy pushes me down and climbs on top of me. Her skirt rides up past her knees and I glimpse the swarm of black pubes waiting behind her lace pants. I put my hands on her bum. I get a boner.
‘I don’t have a condom,’ I say.
‘What?’
She’s kissing my neck.
‘I don’t have a condom.’
She stares at me and sits back. ‘I’m forty-six,’ she says. ‘We don’t need a condom.’
‘I thought you were thirty-five.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
She gets off the bed and goes into the bathroom and locks the door. I sit up. I don’t understand. She does look thirty-five, I feel. I’m not good at ages. She doesn’t look forty-six. She definitely doesn’t look forty-six. I thought women liked it when you said they look young. I thought it was the best compliment. Mum always drops coins when the man in Tesco asks her for ID as a joke.
Maybe she needed the toilet.
Maybe she’s putting on sexy lingerie.
Something more comfortable.
I put my face against the bathroom door. ‘Are you okay?’ I say.
‘I’m okay,’ she says. It’s difficult to make out what she’s saying. ‘You should sleep. It’s late.’ Her voice is wet. I don’t know what I did. I did something wrong. Macy’s upset and it’s because of me. This is why I shouldn’t talk to people. Even nice people are bears when they make heavy weather happen in you.
I get into bed and pull the duvet over my head. I don’t feel tired. I drink a Tiger from the minibar and read about how to land hot-air balloons, make fire from rocks, and skin pigeons.
